Perfect timing: Heat and vacation

It seems so improbable, the timing of this week’s heat wave. The coincidence of weather and school scheduling just felt almost too perfect.

But there it was, as if orchestrated by a film director. Since June, the weather has been mild and pleasant, mostly dry, occasionally rainy, but never hot. Perfect weather for wrapping up the school year, I commented several times throughout the past three weeks: cool weather kept the kids as focused as they could be during the final days of the term, and made it easier for me to persist not only through work deadlines but through the kind of housekeeping tasks I wanted to accomplish before the kids were out of school.

That’s how it stayed right through Tuesday, their last day of the term. Then on Wednesday, the first day without school, temperatures in the 90s bloomed, and stayed the next day and into today. Ever since school vacation began, it’s been hot. Not just sunny and warm but heat-wave hot.

Which, as I say, seems almost improbably perfect. On Wednesday, Tim went to the beach with friends on a long-planned trip; they couldn’t have had a better day for it. I took Holly and her friend Samantha swimming at the pond where we have a summer membership, our first visit of the year. In the evening, we worked at our town’s Strawberry Festival. The air stayed hot well past sunset, and the same the following day.

Normally, temperatures in the 90s can be hard to take, especially day after day, and especially because New England heat tends to bring humidity along with it. We wilt; we feel unmotivated; we get cranky.

But not these past few days. Now it just seems so fitting: it’s the start of vacation, and everyone is enjoying the heat. Holly and I sat in the shade on the library lawn reading despite the pervasive warmth yesterday afternoon; Tim went to a friend’s pool and then played evening baseball. Last night, on the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, the temperatures were still in the 80s as the light seeped out of the sky at nine o’clock.

Eventually we’ll tire of the heat, if it stays much longer. Tim will start to drag on the baseball field; I’ll have trouble finding motivation for my daily run. We might even get a little cranky. But at this point, it’s a perfect start to summer. I’m not sure whether to explain the timing as a theological or meteorological phenomenon. But for now, we’ll keep basking in it. School is over for the year, and if you venture just a step or two beyond the crisply air-conditioned house, there’s no question that it’s summer.

Basking in the heat

We’re on the fourth or fifth day of a record-breaking heat wave in the Northeast, and making my way sluggishly through it reminds me of how much I love hot weather. Really hot weather.

Actually, what I love is not so much really hot weather as really seasonal weather, or extremes of any kind when they fall at the times they should. I like frigid temperatures in January and blizzards in February; muddy messy thaws in March; cold dry winds in November. And, of course, picture-perfect sunny blue skies with warm sunshine in June and a crisp breeze in October.

I especially like hot weather at night. I like the feeling of going outside long after the sun has set and feeling air on my skin that’s warmer than a typical indoor temperature. It makes me think I could walk all night and feel safe and comfortable.

But I also have to admit that earlier this summer, during our first hot spell, it occurred to me that a good part of my self-perception as someone who loves hot weather dates back to the time that I worked in an air-conditioned office building most of the day. During those years, the years that I came to think of myself as a big fan of heat waves, my exposure to the 90-plus degree temperatures was often limited to a quick optional foray outdoors during lunchtime and a walk after dinner.

Hot weather is just one of many things that takes on a different flavor when you are home caring for children, as I am these days during school vacation. It seems to me that in the past, being home on a very hot day meant sitting in the shade reading and sucking on ice cubes. Now it means getting everything done that I normally do – from writing articles on deadline to running loads of laundry – while trying not to let the climbing humidity make me unnecessarily irritable with the kids.

Yesterday, though, we broke down and turned on the air conditioning. My husband and I generally take a bit of Puritan pride in how little we turn on the A/C. I don’t think we used it at all last summer, and the summer before I remember we turned it on just once, and that was because we were hosting a large party at our house. We’re smug about the fact that we don’t pamper ourselves with A/C; we just bask in the warm humid air.

Not this week, though, with temperatures reaching record-breaking three-figure numbers. And I have to say, the hot weather is a lot easier to enjoy when you have the option of escaping from it. Getting a good night’s sleep helps everyone’s disposition, too, and that’s a lot easier with the air conditioning on. So this week we’re relishing the heat in small doses: early-morning running, afternoons swimming in the pond, the shade of a fading day during Tim’s early evening baseball games.

And late at night I stand out on our front step just to breathe in the dense, damp, hay-scented hot summer air, taking comfort once again in the sense that I could walk for hours on a night like this.